Nuke

For those that don't know the ozfortress team 'rip in vana' came first.

Hey Nuke and Zimbix,

Thanks for a great LAN event, we all had a really great time.

As promised i said id write up a list of pros and cons as some possible feedback for the next LAN. Feel free to take it on board if it works or do with it whatever you wish. Most of the pros and cons will be tf2 related.

ServersHaving the servers up all day was great, they were active prior to our arrival which made setting up our computers and playing really easy. Given you guys did not have fiber at the event i would consider setting up a separate server for TF2 running SOAP DM or MGE, something that requires few people and can be played whenever people want.
One of my biggest beefs with the tf2 event is with how the server was handled. I'm sure no one knew that the config was going to break the server in the arena format, but i was upset that Lock and I had to spend several hours of our lan-slide experience testing the server, adding to the config and fixing it. While Lock made some excellent cfg suggestions earlier in the thread, i would suggest next time reaching out to us/other tf2ers earlier and getting a config ironed out and tested. I know at the LAN even you were busy doing other stuff, but it was tough seeing that if us ozfortress crew were not there to sort the server prior and during the competition then it probably wouldn't have gone ahead.
I have mad respect for the hard work you guys put into the Melbourne LAN-scene, but i think its better for me to be truthful in how i saw what went down at the LAN rather than just say it was all great.

CompetitionHaving the round robin format was great, having three teams was great, so nothing constructive from me there.
I think the 5v5 arena format went well despite the issues we had with setting it up. I do feel that at the event the 5v5 format was pretty unforgiving for the newer players, ending in us taking 16-3 and 16-2 wins. I made the suggestion of trying 4v4 arena respawn, which requires some server plugins but should run itself very smoothly. While its more of a casual mode it still provides that team based gaming that you want and is more forgiving on newer players (cap the point your whole team respawns, etc).

I had a great time at this event, all the lan-slide staff were super welcoming and nice, the facilities were great and the players were nice. Definitely keen for the next one!

Also can i say a huge thank you to you guys for reaching out to us on the forums, its pretty fucking sick when lan organizers like to interact with their community and encourage stuff like this. Made me want to attend event more, even if i did break the website trying to log in with facebook

Feel free to ask any questions about my response and i shall en-devour to reply

oxy

I completely agree with oxy in regards to the format and such, Arena 5v5 was sloppy and hardly suited to the LAN environment.

As a LAN, there are two options you can go down. The first which oxy suggested which is the 4v4 Arena Respawn which is a lot more casual friendly and will likely see more teams entering from the more casual scene. The second is going towards the standardized competitive format as Respawn does, but this would limit the casual players entering the competition and Respawn already provides such a format, so personally I also advocate 4v4 Arena Respawn.

When it comes to the configs, I think you guys should have attempted to reach out to us for some preliminary testing when it comes to the servers to ensure that everything is ok. I am also in favour of having a secondary server running MGE/SoapDM.

Overall, it was a great LAN and I will definitely be in attendance for v13.